The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock A Novel (P.S.)

On the English Channel island of Guernsey, a teenage girl’s Mean Girls-like experience pushes her to murder her best friend in a scandal, she will discover, that mirrors her uncle’s previously unknown story from the days of the island’s Nazi occupation during WWII. Told through the voices of fifteen-year-old Cat Rozier and her long-dead Uncle Charlie—known to Cat only by the audio recordings he left behind—The Book of Lies lucidly illuminates the interior lives of a scorned modern girl with attitude and a defiant, faded man. With echoes of Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love and Jennifer McMahon’s Promise Not to Tell, Mary Horlock’s stunning debut novel is an unforgettable exploration of aspiration, anguish, and rebellion.

Mary Horlock is an authority on contemporary art who has worked at the Tate Britain and Tate Liverpool, and curated the Turner Prize for contemporary art. She spent her childhood in Guernsey, and lives in London.

Unrated Critic Reviews for The Book of Lies

Publishers Weekly

Horlock's strange and inviting debut revolves around Catherine Rozier, a plump teenager with few friends growing up in the 1980s on Guernsey island, and her proclamation that she killed her fair-weather best friend.

Curious Book Fans

As the book progressed I became increasingly interested in the wartime story, completely failing to spot the ‘whodunnit’ behind the death of Catherine’s grandfather or the impact that its revelation had on her father until the very end of the book.